Just finished up a new pc with a MSI motherboard (K8M890 chipset) with a WD sata hard drive.

All of the hardware appears to be functioning properly, and the hard drive is present in BIOS. When trying to load Windows XP I receive an error - no hard drive found. This is immediately upon installation, I do not get the option to choose a drive,partition,etc...

I'm assuming that I need to load the drivers from the MSI cd, but its not bootable. So how can I do that without first loading an OS? I read similar topics on this board, but most ended with 'load the sata drivers.' Shouldn't my MSI disc be bootable? Or am I overlooking something?

I should mention that this is my first sata hd install, but power and sata cables are connected and as I mentioned the drive is present in BIOS.

If you aren't careful when connecting the SATA drive, you might overlook something.... I did that while rebuilding a friends computer... Some computers have SATA headers in different places. One set will be the main set, and another set is for RAID configurations. Check the product manual (mobo's) to make sure it is in the correct bank of headers. When I had the drive in the RAID socket, it wouldn't see the drive, if I put it in the other bank, it was fine. There are likely steps that can lead you to use the drive on the RAID header, but it is probably more hassle than it is worth.

Your CD should have a file with the raid sata drivers you need. My disk has a program to make a raid sata floppy disk. When you go to install your windows you need to hit F6 when it tells you too.
Right at the beginning of the install {you only have a few seconds to hit F6} put your raid sata disk in the floppy drive and install the raid/sata driver's.
I believe its two drivers. You may be able to load the drivers off of a CD too but not sure about that....